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Leeds Chairman Chris Beverley looks at England's contribution to the field of science and argues that the embrace of reason is the only way to defeat the evils of political correctness. In a recent speech delivered in Edinburgh, Google chief Eric Schmidt opined that the UK educational establishment is neglecting science and engineering and favouring 'luvvy' subjects. Dr Schmidt called for a return to a 'Victorian' approach to education in order to ensure that the UK is able to compete on the world economic stage.Dr Schmidt went on to remind the audience that; 'You invented photography. You invented TV. You invented computers in both concept and practice. 'It's not widely known, but the world's first office computer was built in 1951 by Lyon's chain of tea shops. Yet today, none of the world's leading exponents in these fields are from the UK.'* It is easy to forget just what a contribution our country has made to the scientific advances of humanity. We can be grateful to Dr Schmidt for drawing our attention to this. I reproduced an article on the Morley Patriot Blog recently that was taken from the excellent English Nationalist magazine Steadfast. The article, English Intellectual Accomplishments, outlined the contribution of English thinkers to human civilisation in a variety of intellectual fields. (The article covers a great deal of valuable ground and is worth reading in full here: http://morleypatriot.blogspot.com/2011/07/english-intellectual-accomplishments.html) As this article points out, our nation's intellectual output during the past few centuries has been formidable. The modern world would not be what it is without the English. Two fields in particular stand out in this regard, namely literature and science, and it is science that I will deal with here. It really is hard to overstate the contribution of English minds to the field of science. Were a nation able to claim just Isaac Newton or Charles Darwin as their own, this alone would rightly entitle them to a seat at the top table of human scientific endeavour. But these great thinkers represent the mere tip of the iceberg. Simple lists of names do not come anywhere near to doing justice to the achievements of those so enumerated, but consider only the names Joseph Priestley, Arthur Halley, Michael Faraday, Francis Crick, John Prescott Joule and Edward Jenner and it becomes clear that we should be deeply proud of our nation's scientific output. In an increasingly globalised world economy, a focus on science and engineering is the key to ensuring a vibrant and competitive economy. We cannot offer the low labour costs (that's low wages to you and me) of our Chinese or Indian competitors, nor would this necessarily be desirable. A focus on industries ranging from renewable energy generation and biomedical research through to aeronautics and computing will serve to further enhance our nation's scientific tradition and ensure economic prosperity. Our free trade with emerging nations need not suffer if our economy leads the way in the science-based industries that we have pioneered in the past. Yet the benefits on the embrace of science are not merely to be measured in economic terms. The English were major contributors to the embracing of reason and the scientific method during the period that we now refer to as the Enlightenment, and in these days of political correctness and irrationality, our people are in need of a return to reason more than ever before. The scientific method remains the best tool available to us in our dealings in the world. This involves starting with a hypothesis and then attempting, through experiment, to disprove that hypothesis. When it has proven impossible to disprove, a hypothesis is generally accepted to be correct. This remains the case until such a time as new evidence proves otherwise. The benefits of such an approach cannot hardly be overstated. In politics, for example, imagine if rather than treating our party manifestoes as sacrosanct, extolling their virtues and rejecting any and all criticism of their content, we approached our subject in a scientific manner, not waiting for our opponents to try and show the claims and conclusions that we make to be unsound, but rather attempting to do so ourselves. Perhaps we will find things that actually don't make too much sense and need changing. Perhaps we will decide that it is pretty much all bad and that we may have joined the wrong party! On the other hand, if we have gone about trying to uncover falsehoods in our manifesto and have found it very difficult to do so, then will be reassured that our policies are the right ones. The embrace of evidence over conjecture, of reason over dogma, and of rationality over political correctness, are all part of the embrace of the scientific method and we would all be better off in a society that championed such values. Societies that reject reason and are presided over by religious or ideological zealots, take Saudi Arabia and North Korea as examples, are inevitably oppressive and tyrannical. In England it is the pernicious ideology of Political Correctness that holds sway. This ideology, the eventual outcome of which if left unchecked is the horror witnessed in the Soviet Gulag and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, must be defeated by reason if our nation is to survive. Attempting to combat one type of dogma using another, as some try to do in combating Islamism for example, will not get us anywhere. It is through reason and the furthering of the scientific heritage that has been bequeathed to us that we will win back our country from the zealots who want to see it destroyed. Chris Beverley is the chairman of Leeds English Democrats You can read more articles by Chris here: www.chrisbeverley.com *Read the full speech here: http://www.allmediascotland.com/my-opinion/31232/eric-schmidt Comments (3)Subscribe to this comment's feedShow/hide comments Common sense.
Good article Chris, I feel we must encourage our young people to go on to University to study Science and Engineering,giving subsidies to these courses and passing on the costs to the many frivolous courses there seem to be these days.Our economic future depends on it in my opinion.
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September 07, 2011
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England's Scientific Heritage
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